Tony Stewart's Car Hits, Kills Driver Kevin Ward Jr. At Canandaigua Motorsports Park

[ImportFan1]

WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO
[YOUTUBE=" "]d0F9VRz0sn0[/YOUTUBE]

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. (AP) -- Three-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart struck and killed a sprint car driver who had climbed from his car and was on the darkened dirt track trying to confront Stewart during a race in upstate New York on Saturday night.

Kevin Ward Jr. had crashed following contact with Stewart one lap earlier and got out of his car as it was stopped along the fence. Video of the incident showed Ward walking from his crashed car onto the racing surface as cars circled by, and, as he gestured at Stewart's passing car, he was struck.

Authorities questioned Stewart but said no criminal charges were imminent. Stewart traveled to Watkins Glen International following the incident and planned to race in Sunday's NASCAR event.

Ontario County Sheriff Philip Povero said Stewart was "visibly shaken" and had been cooperative in the investigation. Authorities were asking spectators and others to turn over any video they recorded of the crash.

"This is right now being investigated as an on-track crash and I don't want to infer that there are criminal charges pending," Povero said. "When the investigation is completed, we will sit down with the district attorney and review it. But I want to make it very clear: there are no criminal charges pending at this time."

NASCAR said it would not prevent Stewart from racing Sunday, and his team appeared to be trying to focus on the track.

"We're business as usual today," said Greg Zipadelli, competition director for Stewart-Haas Racing, a four-car NASCAR organization that is co-owned by Stewart.

A witness said it appeared Ward was trying to confront Stewart, the three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion. The video showed Ward standing to the right of Stewart's familiar No. 14 car, which seemed to kick out from the rear and hit him.

Moments earlier, Ward and Stewart were racing side-by-side for position as they exited a turn. Ward was on the outside when Stewart, on the bottom, seemed to slide toward Ward's car and crowd him toward the wall. The rear tire of Stewart's car appeared to clip the front tire of Ward's car, and Ward spun into the fence.

Povero said Ward, who was wearing a black firesuit and black helmet, had walked into the racing area and one car swerved to avoid him before he was struck by Stewart.

"The next thing I could see, I didn't see (the other driver) anymore," witness Michael Messerly said. "It just seemed like he was suddenly gone."

A spokesman for Stewart's racing team called Ward's death a "tragic accident."

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends," the spokesman said in a statement. "We're still attempting to sort through all the details."

The dirt track, about 30 miles southeast of Rochester, canceled the remainder of the race and later posted a message on its Facebook page encouraging fans to "pray for the entire racing community of fans, drivers, and families."

Ward's website said he began racing go-karts in 1998 at age 4, but didn't start driving sprint cars until 2010. The 20-year-old from Port Leyden, New York, was Empire Super Sprint rookie of the year in 2012 and this year was his fifth season racing the Empire Super Sprints.

Stewart often competes in extracurricular events. The multimillionaire is known to participate in races with purses worth less than $3,000 and drive alongside drivers of varying ages and talent levels.

The accident Saturday came almost exactly a year after Stewart suffered a compound fracture to his right leg in a sprint car race in Iowa. The injury cost him the second half of the NASCAR season. Stewart only returned to sprint track racing last month, and won in his return, at Tri-City Motor Speedway in Michigan.

But the broken leg cost him the entire second-half of last season and sidelined him during NASCAR's important Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. Stewart wasn't cleared to get back in a race car until February, the day the track opened for preparations for NASCAR's season-opening Daytona 500 began.

"Everybody has hobbies. Everybody has stuff they like to do when they have downtime, and that's just what it is for me," he said last month following his return to sprint car racing. "That's what I like to do when I have extra time. I don't think there is anything wrong with doing it. I feel like there are a lot of other things I could be doing that are a lot more dangerous and a lot bigger waste of time with my time off do than doing that."

Stewart was a spectator at the Knoxville Nationals in Iowa on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of the accident, and posted on his Twitter account: "Thank you to everyone that worked so hard to get me back to where I'm at today. It's your life, live it!"

Among Stewart's many business interests is his ownership of Ohio dirt track Eldora Speedway, which last month hosted the NASCAR Truck Series, and his stake in Stewart-Haas Racing, which fields cars for Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kurt Busch and Danica Patrick.

He's struggled a bit this year since returning from his leg injury, and heads into Sunday's race winless on the season and ranked 19th in the standings.

Stewart was scheduled to start 13th on Sunday at Watkins Glen, one of just five remaining races for Stewart to either score a win or move inside the top 16 in points to grab a valuable spot in NASCAR's Chase.

The site of Saturday night's crash is the same track where Stewart was involved in a July 2013 accident that seriously injured a 19-year-old driver. He later took responsibility for his car making contact with another and triggering the 15-car accident that left Alysha Ruggles with a compression fracture in her back.

Stewart's team announced on Sunday morning that he will not race at Watkins Glen.

 

[young_]

Tony Stewart's Car Hits, Kills Driver Kevin Ward Jr. At Canandaigua Motorspor...

I saw that, pretty crazy.

It looks bad that Tony Stewart was the one that pissed him off, AND the one that hit him.

On the other hand, it was stupid for the man to try and confront Stewart on an active race track, at night, wearing all black.

What looks worse is that when he hits him, he veers right (in his direction) and then turns back.

 

[ImportFan1]

Yeah. Pretty crazy. I've been to a few dirt races and those things aren't easy to control.

I personally think he shouldn't be racing at those lower levels. Last year he caused a 15 car accident on lap 7 that sent a 19 yr old to the hospital at that track and a few weeks later shattered his leg. Keep him off the dirt.

 

[mymmeryloss]

Meh

 

[lethal6]

If he did it on purpose, hang him.

The way it looks though, Ward was an idiot that shouldn't have run onto the track until it was clear. He was going towards Stewart's car before he was hit. What the f**k did he think was going to happen? That Stewart would stop, get out and fight? What a moron and completely showed his age in this one.

To me it looks like the car moved towards Ward after it hit him because the body caught the wheel and "pulled" it that way. The car went back to the direction it was moving after the body was spit out.

The car right before Stewart almost hit Ward as well. Only difference is Ward wasn't actively moving towards that one like he was Stewart's.

The case for Stewart doesn't bode well with his known temper. I hate Nascar and don't follow it, but I know all too well about his temper as it is well documented. That will play a big part in the investigation.

 

[OGstackadolla]

I've read quite a bit about this, really sad to see a young man lose his life. I don't care for Tony much, but that aside, I would say it's almost 50/50. First day before you're allowed on track, they tell you that under no circumstance are you to exit the vehicle unless fire danger; on the other hand, Tony being Tony, I could only imagine he wanted to rooster-tail the kid to humble him, but this instance he went too far. I DO NOT think Tony meant to hit the kid of injure him at all. People keep talking about how these cars are steered with the throttle, which is true, when the kart is under full power. At reduced speeds under caution, the front tires will bite a hell of a lot more.
When it comes down to it, the kid did exactly what he's grown up watching drivers do in all levels of racing, including his rival, Tony Stewart. Was it reckless? Yes. Does that mean Tony is blameless? No.

 

[XpL0d3r]

Canadaigua is pretty damn close to me (and [MENTION=44297]JohnS[/MENTION]), less than an hour. Definitely a sad situation. Never been a fan of Tony Stewart though, he's a hothead for sure.

 

[OGstackadolla]

Absolutely great read. Instead of focusing on the incident itself, he kinda goes through how these things happen on an interesting level.

http://espn.go.com/racing/nascar/cup/story/_/id/11342118/kevin-ward-jr-blunt-reminder-racing-reality

For a moment, I forgot there was a chance we could die.

It was April 14, 2013, and I'd let the adrenaline and excitement of the racetrack rob me of my common sense. It was a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at the Rockingham Speedway, my hometown track and the place where I first fell in love with motorsports. Now my 8-year-old daughter was there, attending her first race, and just as enamored with it all as I had been. And why not? That morning she'd taken pictures with Brad Keselowski, Bubba Wallace and "all the girls in the race." She'd been on the grid for "drivers, start your engines" and then gripped my arm as the field lurched to life under the green flag.

It had been a great day. Downright magical.

As the race's first pit stops began, I was quick to hustle her down to pit road. We went into an empty pit stall and joined several other fans who'd taken up spots along the knee-high wall to watch as a truck slid in sideways, just a few feet away. The crew dove into action, slinging hoses and tires and then ... a chill suddenly slinked down my spine ... hey, wait ... Ryan ... what the hell are you doing?

I looked at my beaming little girl, her ponytail bracketed by her big, pink ear coverings. She was leaning over the wall, just as I had done hundreds of times. But this was different. Suddenly a light came on. It was as if two decades of veneer had been stripped from my eyes. I no longer saw a race truck. I saw a 3,400-pound, growling, smoking machine. I didn't see tire changers. I saw lug nuts zinging through the air like bullets. I saw fire extinguishers ... I saw ambulances ... I saw shredded tires ... a guy with his arm in a sling. I saw flashbacks to the night at Hickory Motor Speedway when I was nearly run over by a car that lost control and drove into the pit box. I suddenly remembered the heat I'd felt on my face from a flash fire that exploded in an IndyCar pit beside me. My mind saw the welts left on my back when I'd been pelted with flying lug nuts, identical to the ones whistling by now.

I no longer saw racing. I saw violence.

So I grabbed my little girl by the back of her T-shirt, yanked her out of there and took her to the media center roof, safely two stories above it all.

How could I have been so stupid? So insensitive? So oblivious? Because I have been around it all so much over the past 20 years that I take it for granted. Because I truly do love it. I have faith in the people who build and race these machines. Many are my friends and I have long stood in awe of what they do.

However, during the weekly grind of the longest season in professional sports, it becomes easy to dismiss the danger, for both those who watch and those who participate. Much of that, as it was for me at Rockingham, is a compliment. A belief that everyone around you is so good at what they do that they can keep it all in line.

But at some point faith becomes comfort. Then comfort becomes complacency. You lose sight of the fact you are constantly surrounded by industrial-strength violence. The kind of forces that lull you into believing that you have them under control, but in reality can hurt you whenever they damn well please. A sort of mechanical "Jurassic Park."

A few years ago my colleague Nate Ryan of USA Today wrote a piece titled "Did NASCAR go too far promoting driver safety?" As tends to happen these days, people reacted more to the headline than to the actual piece. But within that piece was a message being sent by veteran racers such as Darrell Waltrip and Rusty Wallace, men who survived the relative rattletrap race cars of the 1970s, as well as the fatalities of the late '90s that led to most of today's safety innovations. "Our cars would kill you," Waltrip told Ryan. "You kissed your wife goodbye and drove down pit road, looking in the mirror and waving, because there was always doubt that, 'If something goes wrong, I might not be back.'"

Those veterans, no matter what series they raced in, openly worry about younger generations taking safety for granted. The equipment is better. The racetracks are better. Racing-related deaths are now seldom and shocking instead of business as usual. But the beast will never be completely declawed.

"You can't allow yourself to get comfortable," Johnny Rutherford explained to me during a conversation in 1999. The three-time Indy 500 champion was the pace car driver and driving coach for the fledgling Indy Racing League, a series filled with unproven youngsters. "We're all guilty of it, but youngsters today are a video-game generation. Danger can feel not real. You can get real brave when the brave thing to do is not to do it. But if there's one truth in auto racing, it's that whenever we allow ourselves to take it for granted, something will happen to remind us of how stupid we were to do so."

Then Lone Star JR sat up in his chair for emphasis. "You can't dare this sport but so long," he said.

I thought about Rutherford's words in September 2005, when an angry Robby Gordon strolled squarely out into traffic on the New Hampshire backstretch to throw his helmet at Michael Waltrip's car after a crash. Gordon assumed that the field, slowed by the caution flag (but still traveling above your city's speed limit), would weave around him while he completed his toss. But, man, what a stupid dare.

What if the throttle on one of the 20-plus cars easing toward him under caution suddenly stuck? What if a steering wheel had come loose in someone's hands as they weaved back and forth? What if a tire had suddenly exploded under one of the cars and sent it out of control? C'mon, man, that stuff never happens!

Yes, it does. I've seen it all with my own eyes. It happens all the time. And that's why I should have known better when I put my daughter in harm's way at Rockingham. That's why Gordon should have known better at Loudon. That's why Kurt Busch should have known better at Indianapolis in 2003. Or Tony Stewart at Bristol in 2012. Or Shawn Monahan at the Waterford Speedbowl last Saturday night. The list goes on and on, every weekend.

Any one of them could have been Kevin Ward Jr.

And that's why they -- we -- need to use Saturday night's tragedy at the Canandaigua Motorsports Park as a reminder that the violence of motorsports might feel dormant. But it's not. It never is.

When I watch the video of Ward exploding out of his race car, I see a kid with a burning passion for his sport. I see the emotion of a racer who believed he had a chance to win and had that chance taken away. I see a youngster who no doubt grew up watching his heroes walk out onto racetracks to express their displeasure with a rival, danger be damned, and thusly felt he could do the same.

But Ward made the same mistake that they all did. He made the same mistake that I did. He put his faith in the people and the equipment roaring around him. He assumed they could control forces that don't want to be controlled. But loving racing isn't an excuse to forget the dangers of it.

For a moment, he forgot there was a chance he could die.

 

[mymmeryloss]

Damn. Eye opening for sure. Its like that with my job too. So dangerous but u never think about it until something happens.

Its like my daughter says when i complain about my wrist pain-- "dad then you shouldnt have got hurt".

Nobody plans to get hurt or expects it. Sure u practice safety, but u never expect anything to happen.

 

[OGstackadolla]

We're all definitely guilty of it on some level. We do dangerous things so often that it becomes normal.

 

[303JDMSI]

Didn't quite expect this deep of a conversation from this thread. That was a pretty interesting article on the whole matter. Lot's of intense things going on in the world right now.

 

[OGstackadolla]

I think as automotive enthusiasts, it's something that we feel a connection with. It's something always on the back of our mind when we're in a car, on track or not, there is always the inherent danger of "What is something goes wrong?" Last year we had an accident with two fatalities at Chuckwalla, and I ended up taking a few months away from the track.
I'm glad to see there are still intelligent people out there driving Hondas